The Oregon Supreme Court this morning rejected school advocates' legal claims that the Legislature should be ordered to give public schools billions more dollars to meet the standards of educational quality that voters added to the state Constitution in 2000.

The high court agreed with the school advocates that the Legislature in 2005 allocated too little money for schools to achieve the kind of educational quality that Oregon voters endorsed. On that point, the court reversed lower court rulings in this three-year-old case.

But Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz made clear in today's ruling that the remedy sought by school advocates -- an order from the court to force the Legislature to give schools more money -- goes beyond the Oregon Constitution.

In effect, the high court upheld the status quo, which requires the Legislature to issue a report explaining why it was unable to fund schools at a higher level and detail the implications for students. The measure that voters put into the Constitution allows for that option.

That section of the Constitution "contemplates the possibility that the legislature will not fund the public school system at the legislatively specified level in a particular biennium and provides that, in that instance, the legislature will report its failure to the public," DeMuniz wrote.